DMCA, DVD, CSS & Documentary
The IDA’S made a few posts recently about the anti-piracy Content Scrambling System (CSS) technology found on commercial DVDs. Apparently the system is preventing documentary filmmakers from accessing content on discs which is either public domain or subject to ‘fair use’.
Firstly, if something is public domain, I’m not sure how the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) comes into it. DMCA is also an American law which I believe has little jurisdiction outside the US. Of course, I’m no lawyer so I may be way off, but the whole subject seems to revolve around some filmmaker’s difficulties in circumventing CSS on DVDs. They either go without, or record footage via analogue capture. Enterprising directors could also go for a ghetto telecine.
As we all know, CSS was cracked in a matter of hours by a 14 year old Norwegian hacker who packaged the hack for all to use. It’s known as DeCSS and is widely implemented in a number of DVD ripping programs.
Anyway, all this got me thinking about the nature of DVDs themselves, which use a compressed MPEG-2 video stream. Even if you do DeCSS some video, it’s still compressed and is of lesser quality than even standard def DV.
While most of us would agree in challenging archaic copyright laws in general, surely the MPAA’s stopgap anti-piracy measures can’t be that much of a deterrant to filmmakers?
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